Hello everyone and welcome to my game. We have a few matters to attend to before we can start playing.
First, let us introduce ourselves. You don’t have to provide personal information if this concerns you, but it would help us have a better game if we knew a little bit about the person behind the screen. If you would participate in a groupchat via text message, say so. If everyone opts in, I will gather you're phone numbers via PM and create one, but I won’t if someone would prefer not to because I wouldn’t want to leave that person out. If you want to participate in a groupchat that is not via text message, such as over discord, I am open to this idea. However I like the idea of text messages because they allow for real time, immediate communication in a way that a service like discord doesn’t.
I already introduced myself a little, but here is some more information about me. I am in my twenties, but consider myself an old soul. I don’t make friends very easily and am somewhat socially awkward. I am newly married with a dog. My pronouns are he/him/his. I am very athletic, if small, but right now all my sports except horseback riding are on hiatus. I am excited to play this game because I think it will develop my PBP and writing skills, and because it will be the first TTRPG game I’ve played in a while.
Second, we need to establish some ground rules.
How long do we wait before botting someone? 12, 24, 36, or 48 hours? My ranked preference is as follows: 24, 36, 12, 48.
Is it different in different circumstances? What should we keep in mind? Personally, I think the main difference would be if someone were to have stated that they would be posting infrequently. In this case, I would be inclined to bot them after a shorter absence.
Who should do the botting, me or another player? I am happy to bot someone, but I may not always have much extra time, so there’s a pretty good chance that about half the time I would just be rolling some dice and briefly describing the results. Which brings me to the next question,
How should we go about botting? Should we try to take what we perceive to be the most effective combat options? What about limited use abilities? Should a player who doesn’t post lose their action? Should we try to include descriptive text, talking, or RP elements when botting someone? For example, if I were botting Norde in combat, I could do any of the following:
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Norde raises his longsword, feins forward, and then strikes with a speed you wouldn’t think such a big man would be capable of.
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Norde raises his longsword, feining forward before striking with a speed you wouldn’t think such a big man would be capable of. ”No one attacks my hornbrother without getting smashed!”
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Please discuss.
Because this is a wilderness travel adventure, things like food, ammunition, water, etc need to be tracked. Carrying capacity is an important part of your character, so much so that there was even a discussion during recruitment about trying to travel with a dogsled. If you run out of food, you have to make decisions about how to feed yourself. If you run out of arrows or antivenom, you might decide to change your route because you’re no longer as well suited to certain types of challenges. However, I do not want to have to track each characters’ items individually. If I want to know how many days worth of food you have left, I shouldn’t have to open each character tab and add up all the food I find in each inventory while also trying to remember if anyone has forgotten to update their inventory.
Instead, I would like you to use this spreadsheet to track inventory items. Take a look at the way I set it up and see if that makes sense to you. Feel free to change the labels or add content if you think it will make it better. With this system, if you were to, say, use your CLW wand seven times and forget to update it, I could just update it for you. And if I forgot to mark off several days of rations, you could update it yourselves. And if you picked up a 20lb golden holy image worth a bunch of money, you could look at the carrying capacity tab to quickly decide who has space to carry it. I don’t think everyone needs to list out their entire inventory, but if you want to you could do so.
By the rules, a character can travel for eight hours per day, spending the rest of the daylight hours making and breaking camp, resting, and eating. Assuming there is at least one character with a speed of 20 ft, the rules say you average a speed of two miles per hour, travelling 16 miles in a day. If you all have a speed of 30ft, you get to increase that to 24 miles per day. Will has a speed of 30 ft. By hustling for a single hour each day, you can add an additional 2-3 miles, allowing you to travel 18-27 miles per day without any issues. However, this figure doesn’t include modifiers for terrain type, snow, and navigability. I customized the rules for these modifiers a little bit and laid them out on this spreadsheet. It’s a bit confusing, so ask me questions if you have them. I expect you will average six to seven eighths speed. For reference, your real travel distance will thus be from 13.5 to 23.5 miles per day, assuming you travel for 8 hours. The total distance to Khel Zhad is 230 Miles along the River Sirion, 200 Miles along the Old Road, and 190 miles as the crow flies.
At the beginning of the game, there are six and a half hours of daylight, and one hour of twilight at sunrise and sunset. By the solstice, in 30 days, you will have lost an hour of daylight. Assuming that you are able to make and break camp and eat two meals during full dark, you will only need to spend about one hour during the day doing things like resting, eating, etc. This leaves 5.5 hours of full light and 2 hours of twilight for travel, and the full light will shrink over time. You can hustle to skip this hour of resting, but this does count against the normal limit against hustling, and works out to be the same as normal hustling (so you’d just be reflavoring an hour that you spend intermittently jogging as skipping lunch and not taking off your pack when you rest). Traveling during the day is generally safer than during twilight, and traveling during twilight is safer than during full dark. Thus, moving faster can allow you to avoid danger by making it so you don’t have to travel at night, but you’re most likely going to want to travel at night at least a little bit.
When traveling, I will generally tend to move you forward until you gain information that might affect decision making. So if you’re traveling on the Old Road, I might make a post saying that you travel for two days uneventfully and then see signs of orcs nearby, and describe exactly what you see. Then you could decide if you were about to walk into an ambush, if you already passed a group of orcs, if you think they might follow you in the middle of the night, if you want to just blissfully meander along, etc. I will do my best to only stop or delay the action if you are presented with a meaningful decision.
Feel free to change your build if any of this information makes you think differently about the value of your statistics. Which brings us to:
We have:
An archer Bard with good AC, good damage, and buffing and arcane support, but a weak fort save.
A Witch with a little ranged damage and good spells for blasting, control, debuff, and utility options, but weak Fort Save and AC.
A Magus 3/Ranger 1 with great AC and Saves with good burst damage potential and some arcane support, but mediocre base damage.
A Barbarian with amazing damage and lots of HP but weaker AC for a frontliner.
This leaves you with no divine support, two dedicated backliners, and plenty of arcane casting. Gitanas’ player has said they were initially considering a hunter, while Hedraks’ player has said they were considering a paladin. Either one would give access to lesser restoration, which might be useful. There are also no wands of CLW in the party, which is fine by me but increases your chance of dying. I think you could probably be fine with no changes, but if you would like to change your character that’s fine by me.
Finally, we may need to do some retconning to determine how you know one another and why you’re in Gringham. Personally, I’m of the inclination to handwave it, but it really depends on how much you want to RP with the other players. The more you want to engage with the other players, the more rewarding it will be to know how you met one another and why you are where you are. I am happy to provide content if we want to spend a substantial amount of time on this, but I don’t want to delay the start of the game by more than two weeks. Also, I think we should only be delaying things by more than a week if everyone agrees it is a good idea.
I think that is all for now. Tomorrow I will post a few more knowledge rolls that I realized I should have included at the beginning of recruitment. I will also be auditing your builds once everyone has a complete and well formatted alias.
Also, the prize for best formatting goes to Gitana. That’s a lot of linkifying!
Let's get started!
First, thank you for selecting me. I am looking forward to this game and meeting new players.
Player: I have been role playing since the 1970s, which puts me in my 60s. I enjoy writing fiction and non-fiction, so role playing gives me a chance to let my imagination get some exercise. I am married (wife) with no children (prounouns: he, etc.). I live in Virginia and I'm still working as a university teacher of physics and math. I watched the evolution of role playing games from first edition DnD, GURPS, Shadowrun, Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, Doctor Who RPG, among others. Right now, Pathfinder 1E and Starfinder are my favs.
I am currently a GM in PBP, running two 1E Pathfinder Adventure Paths (Wrath of the Righteous and Reign of Winter), both of which have been running for several years and are only in the 2nd volume of six.
One thing about the gameplay format I want to double check: one of the recommended sources on PBP format recommended writing gameplay posts in the past tense. I really like this but it seems most games use present tense. It takes some getting used to and double checking each post but I feel it reads better, more like a novel. If you want to compare the difference, see my two AP campaigns. WOTR is in past tense (although both players and GM sometimes slip into present tense); ROW is a game I inherited as GM early on so they were already established as present tense and didn't want to change.
A word about my schedule. The university where I teach has five week terms during which time I usually teach two classes that usually meet Monday through Thursday for three to five hours. Sometimes these classes meet in the morning and sometimes in the evening, to accommodate different student work situations. So this means sometimes I do most of my posting in the evening and other times mostly in the morning. Right now, I've got just a single class I teach Monday and Wednesday in the morning, so I've got a lot of time now, but that changes every five weeks. I let the group know when my schedule changes. I don't generally get long vacation opportunities and with COVID-19, travel options are also limited, so I shouldn't be having to miss posting. I occasionally hit patches where I miss posting every day, but I try to let people know about that.
I'm happy to provide a cell phone number for chats. I'll send it in a PM to GM Trifty.
I'll start a new post to get into the discussion topics.
Hi everyone. Really hyped to be a part of this one - thank you for the selection GM Trifty!
Right upfront I am always a bit hesitant regarding providing too much of my personal info over the www. As such I would rather not provide my personal phone number, but am perfectly cool if you guys do and share text messages.
I have been playing RPGs since the early 90s (so I can't beat Gitara there!), and have been through many different systems - most consistently Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, Vampire, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu and Pathfinder. I am originally from southern Europe but now live in northern Europe with my family = me (pronoun: he) + wife + 2 girls.
I am usually able to post during most of my day (again, European time), less during the weekends which are more spent with family and other activities.
Botting: I would prefer 36 hours, but I believe for the sake of expedience, 24 would be the best. I see bot as a non RP behavior, just a basic mechanical one without use of special abilities (healing another can be an exception if it is part of your 'portfolio'). Usually no roleplaying involved, and just a description of the actions.
Treasure and inventory: Personally I would prefer not to use any external spreadsheets - I think too many bookkeeping bogs down play, and is a personal turn-off for me. But I am obviously ok with doing it.
Travel: I need to read this one a bit more thoroughly :P
Party Composition: 'Mediocre base damage'?! How dare you?! I disagree, but that remains to be seen ;)
The lack of strong divine presence is something I noticed from the get go - like GM Trifty pointed out, I am perfectly ok with bringing a Paladin to the group (she would be more of a strong, resilient frontliner than a healer though), or perhaps an actual cleric, set up as a second line combatant (reach cleric?) but obviously stronger as far as healing/condition removal goes.
Also I vote for us to pitch in for a CLW wand if it is not too meta.
EDIT (after Zordt post): I think we both can use the wand of CLW, but indeed the condition removal/stat restoration is out of all our spell lists?
Woohoo, excited to get started!
Introduction
I value my privacy highly but I can share some general information. I've been playing for about 12 years and started with 3.5, and have focused the vast majority of my role-playing in Pathfinder 1e. I graduated college in the last few years and work full time as an engineer in America. I've been playing on the boards for about 10 years, and I'm currently running my own homebrew world with my IRL group.
Communication
FYI GM, you can get instant notifications from Discord if you download the app on your phone. I would prefer a Discord group simply to keep all my gaming communication together (and it's easier to search for old messages), but I would be alright with a text group if that's preferred.
Botting
I usually go by "as needed" with a 24 hour qualifier. Much shorter if the player informed us of their absence.
For who, that's a very case by case basis. In some games I would let the GM run my character, in other games I would give responsibility to a certain player who understands my build.
For how, I think if somebody will either be unavailable for a long stretch of time or they know combat is coming, to give their action priorities. I.e.
"I will be gone for the next 4 days. Zordt will prioritize the following in combat:
1) Healing anybody that goes down
2) Getting inspire courage active
3) Firing bow with rapid shot at weakest targets to lower enemy numbers"
Tracking
I'm fine with a spreadsheet for loot tracking. I do the same in many of my other games. I don't have time to review the sheet at this moment but I'm sure it's pretty simple and straightforward.
Question: As an archer, will you be expecting me to track my non-special ammunition? If so I may invest some background skills into fletching.
Travel
All looks good. Although there's a pretty high chance we will try to buy some horses or otherwise appropriate mounts to increase our travel speed, so I would plan appropriately.
Party Composition
Holy hell that magus has some killer saves.
Yes lack of divine is our big noticeable hole, although I do function as a secondary healer with cure light wounds. I haven't finalized gear and would be happy to be the user for a wand of CLW, although I would request we pool our resources and make it a "party purchase" since healing helps everybody. It would be a little under 200 gold each.
Party History
Hmm, that's always a tough one. For such a short game I'm inclined to say we all already know each other and quickly hash out some history, but I would have no problem with us coming together fresh for this.
Obviously Zordt would likely have the most in common with Hedrak, both half-orcs who left hostile family situations, although in very different contexts. I'm sure they would be mutually curious about life in the other's homeland.
For Gitana, perhaps Zordt was the victim of one of her scams, but instead of being angry he was amused and they fell into a good relationship?
Norde...what a fascination character concept. Perhaps the others found you lost and wayward, perhaps being taken advantage of by another, and now are taking on parental roles to help you become autonomous?
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For my schedule, I'm typically available M-F in the mornings and afternoons, and I check the boards occasionally on the weekends.
As a heads up, I will be travelling this weekend, Friday-Monday, and will likely only be available for brief posts in the late evening.
I will have my stat block in the requested format by tomorrow at the latest.
In response to Albion:
I agree with his take on botting.
For party composition, although we definitely do lack a divine character, we are at a low enough level that we could replicate their effects with consumables. Wand of CLW and some potions of healing and lesser restoration would be all we need. If anybody wants to adjust their character that's fine, but I would never ask them to, especially because in my personal tastes I usually find the divine role the most boring and rarely fill it myself.
Regarding 'botting, I think it should be GM's option when to 'bot. The minimum time to post should be 24 hours, since schedules are different for different players. Best to allow one day.
As a GM, I play it by ear when a player has not posted and everyone is waiting. I'll 'bot unless the PC has a lot of options, including casting spells. If possible, I'll have the PC take a melee action or use a wand so as not to use a spell the player may have been saving for a different situation.
I recommend having everyone include 'botting instructions on the profile page, so the GM can have some guidance about what to do when necessary.
Edit: I think for the occasional need to 'bot a PC, it's best to let the GM do it. If a player knows they will be absent for a week, for example, then having a PC do the 'botting can be a good option if the players are happy with the situation.
This brings up another convention to decide: should play unfold in initiative order or can listed players post in any order? I think an important part of combat is the choices a player has when it is their turn to act. When posting comes in wily-nily it can diminish the fun (for me). The drawback, of course, is the extra time it can take.
As GM, I prefer to keep posts in initiative order, but my players know if they have a limited window to post and their turn is coming soon, they can post early; but in this case, their actions don't take place until the earlier PCs have acted, which can force the occasional ret-con when someone else kills the target you assumed you had.
For initiative, presuming we are in block initiative, I never have an issue with posting out of order. I let the GM wrap everything up in sequential order.
I'm working my way through the GM's initial questions. I'll get around to responding to other players posts soon.
A quick comment, Gitana currently has a Wand of CLW that she bought with her starting wealth, along with a wand of mage armor. She also has first and second level CLW spells she can prepare, although I got the wands so she could focus her limited spell slots on other spells.
Next question is on the resource tracking. The spreadsheet looks fine. We can divide loot as we go, since we're possibly only in this for one adventure. We should agree to give items first to whichever party member can use an item most effectively. After that, players can call dibs, roll to who gets the desired item, or just allocate it to one PC's pack with the understanding another PC can request it if need arises.
Gitana has a handy haversack, which still has about 20 pounds to spare for rations. Will we need to carry water or can we make survival rolls to see if we can make safe use of available potable sources like streams and ponds or maybe snow?
Currently, she is a little short on cash, so if we will have to invest in rations, she may need a loan, or perhaps give her a roll on her profession skill (fortune teller) to see how much money she can make in town. Or I can liquidate some of what she's spent gold on to reserve some cash for purchases.
Gitana currently has a Wand of CLW that she bought with her starting wealth...
I would be alright splitting the cost for this, I try not to let healers spend their own wealth on party-wide healing items.
We should agree to give items first to whichever party member can use an item most effectively. After that, players can call dibs, roll to who gets the desired item, or just allocate it to one PC's pack with the understanding another PC can request it if need arises.
Agreed. Meritocracy first.
Currently, she is a little short on cash, so if we will have to invest in rations, she may need a loan, or perhaps give her a roll on her profession skill (fortune teller) to see how much money she can make in town. Or I can liquidate some of what she's spent gold on to reserve some cash for purchases.
Hopefully we will share the burden of paying for healing items and that can free up some of your cash. Rations are pretty cheap for PCs at this level, but the main burden is their weight. If we pick up horses that problem should be alleviated as well.
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Suggestions for Party Purchases
Wand of CLW (750gp, 187.5gp each)
Potion of Lesser Restoration (300gp per potion, 75gp each per potion) - Perhaps 3 or 4 of these?
Horses (price varies, see options here) - Good for increasing our overland speed and carrying extra gear
I also recommend for anybody who doesn't have innate healing abilities to pick up at least a potion of CLW. You never know when you're going to be the last man standing and need to heal one of the healers.
Travel: I'm happy letting the GM handle distances as outlined. Gitana has a set of snowshoes and speed 30. It has been mentioned that we might invest in mounts or perhaps a cart and team of draft animals to pull it. Would this change the speeds dramatically? I've heard it said that one can't generally go much faster on horseback than on foot, since horses generally don't walk faster than people and are limited in the time they can go at normal running speeds.
Party Composition: Every party is going to have strengths and weakness, particularly when limited to 4 PCs. As GM, I usually try to take the party composition into account when deciding on what to throw at them, avoiding things that I can predict will be difficult to deal with. As I mentioned above, Gitana currently does have a wand of CLW which she is happy to use for party healing. She will not be as effective as an arcane caster, however, if she has to prepare the spell.
If we know we are likely to deal with monsters that drain abilities, we should probably have someone with lesser restoration, but otherwise, we can probably deal with a PC occasionally having to deal with a diminished ability for time it takes to recover naturally.
If we have enough arcane power without Gitana (I haven't studied the other PC's closely yet) I can switch over to Bernina, my 4th level hunter. But I personally would prefer Gitana.
Past Connections:I will be reading through the profiles as they stand now (Gitana's is pretty much ready except for small adjustments to equipment) and will suggest ideas for possible ways Gitana might know other PCs.
But for now, here are some simple options I'm happy to go with. Gitana is an itinerant professional fortune teller.
1) Her usual method of getting to the next town safely is to either offer her services to any traveling merchants in return for letting her ride on one of their wagons or just walk with the convoy in exchange for the protection of the other guards. So she could be in town having ridden in with the last merchant convoy (if such are still traveling) and may not know anyone in the eventual adventuring party. This has the advantage that it requires no extra time or RP and we can use the initial game play thread to get acquainted.
2) Gitana would also be willing to form short-term alliances with other traveling adventurers to allow her the safety to get from town to town, as long as the adventurers are willing to spend as many days in each town as she needs to mine the community for customers and also willing to leave town in a hurry if she gets into trouble, as she does from time to time. That would allow us to hand-wave that Gitana already knows one or more of the other PCs.
I would prefer #1 above so we can use the game to get to know each other; I think that is a little more fun. But I'm flexible and willing to work with other players to weave something together as past history.
Gitana has an interesting background story under a spoiler. It involves her being enslaved to a household in a community that is into some evil cult while she was a teenager. If someone wants to work with me, we could work out a way your PC helped her escape her situation, which would mean a much longer relationship, perhaps being together for the duration of the time spent gaining levels. But unless that idea really grabs anyone, I'm okay with letting that be something PCs will earn about as we play.
Introduction
Nice to meet you all. I didn't know about this discord app (I'm fairly new to smartphones), but it sounds pretty good. Here is a link to a server I made.
Botting
By majority decision, I will bot people after a 24 hour absence. If you're going to be absent or spotty for a certain amount of time, it is expected that you say so so that we can bot you after a shorter amount of time. I will only take basic, mechanical actions that don't consume highly limited resources and then adjucate the results. In certain cases, a player may designate other priorities, in which case I may take other actions. A player may also designate another player to bot them for a specified period.
Inventory tracking
It sounds like we are ok using the spreadsheet I created. Albion, you don't have to pay too much attention to it, but its purpose is actually to speed up gameplay and make it easier on everyone to track resources that need to be tracked.
Travel
I'm sorry that the rules I made are a bit kludgy and tough to read. They also use fractions of 8, which normally I would avoid but since a typical travel day contains 8 hours, should be pretty easy to work with. I think it's unavoidable to use
You can buy mounts/pack animals before the game starts if you would like. I do not recommend trying to pull a cart.
Horses can actually travel farther than humans in a day, but not by a lot unless they're in good shape for that purpose. Another big advantage of a mount is that they can run quickly, so if you ran into trouble you might be able to run away. However, you probably don't want a horse, since it wouldn't be able to graze well and would need to carry its own food. A horse that's exercising a lot will need to eat about 25 lbs of food, most of which is hay and some of which is corn. So if you had a ten days supply of food, half your horse's carrying capacity would be taken up just carrying its own food.
Instead, you could use a reindeer or a musk ox. These animals are much better adapted for grazing in the arctic, and can get 2/3rds of what they need by grazing. They won't increase your speed, however.
A well fed, muscly, domestic reindeer weights around 650lbs. It needs to eat about 15lbs of food per day, but you only need to carry 5lbs per day and it can get the rest via grazing. A 20 days supply of supplemental food thus only weighs 100lbs. It has a walking speed of 30 ft when carrying between 150 and 350 lbs, and a speed of 40 feet below that. You can ride it unless you're Norde, but then there won't be as much cargo capacity. If you overload it, it will make checks against exhaustion and travel more slowly. It costs 45 GP, and the gear you need to help it carry stuff costs 5 GP.
A well fed, muscly musk ox weights around 1300lbs. It needs to eat about 30lbs of food per day, but you only need to carry 10lbs per day and it can get the rest via grazing. A 20 days supply of supplemental food thus only weighs 200 lbs. It has a walking speed of 30 ft when carrying between 300 and 700 lbs, and 40ft below that. You can ride it, but it's not bred for riding, so you'll need a higher ride skill than you would for a horse. It costs 300 GP and the gear you need to help it carry stuff costs 10 GP.
I'm not going to make you make survival checks to find water.
Party Composition
'Mediocre base damage'?! How dare you?! I disagree, but that remains to be seen ;)
Lol. Magus is a hard class to interpret. Your defenses are certainly the best in the party.
I overlooked that Gitana had a wand of CLW, this alleviates that concern. I recommend at least one potion of lesser restoration. I don't think anyone needs to change classes unless you actively want to, and it sounds like no one does.
Retconning
It sounds like there are two options that immediately jump out:
1) Zordt and Hedrak have known one another for a while, and came to the region together. There they found Norde and are now chaperoning him. The three of them met Gitana in Gringham.
2) Zordt knew Gitana in her youth and helped her escape from the evil cult. Later, they met Hedrak. They decided to travel north with him and along the way they met Norde. Then they arrived in Gringham.
I'll post again in a few hours.
I'm seriously thinking of changing Gitana so she has 1 level of either cleric or oracle. I'm quite familiar with both of these classes. She would be giving up a point of BAB but would gain a point of Will save. She would lose a 1st and 2nd level Witch spell per day to cast but would have some extra spells and things like channeling and some extras that come with domain or revelations.
It would not be much of a change in the basic stats since Gitana already has 14 wisdom and that could change to charisma for an oracle. I'm going to work up how that would look, probably with the oracle option, since I think that could be more easily blended with Gitana's back story and personality, not being someone who has never been in a settled community for long and needing to be flexible.
Joined the discord server. I think you'll come to like discord a lot.
Botting rules sound good.
Hmm, hard to argue with that much math on mounts. Guess we're hoofing it!
I like both of the GMs suggested scenarios. I have a third: What if we go with Zordt and Hedrick knowing each other for a while, and Gitana picked up Norde during her travels so those two know each other? Two groups of two coming together.
Gitana I wouldn't worry about changing your build, I think we will be alright with purchasing some consumables. Unless you think you would have more fun with an altered build.
GM, to reiterate, will you be tracking mundane ammunition? I have a number of speciality arrows which I will be tracking, but I am unsure if you want me tracking mundane arrows or not.
GM, to reiterate, will you be tracking mundane ammunition? I have a number of speciality arrows which I will be tracking, but I am unsure if you want me tracking mundane arrows or not.
Sorry, I remember reading that but I forgot to respond. Yes, I would like you to track your mundane ammunition. It looks like you've got 40 right now, you might want to get more.
I agree with Zordt that Gitana doesn't need to change to a level of oracle. From a powerlevel perspective it doesn't seem like a great tradeoff to me, since a second level spell is so much better than a first level one.
Here are some more knowledge rolls that I've decided are important over the last two weeks. Feel free to ask for an update to the map for a particular check, once I know what you do and don't know I'll update the map with additional features. If you want to keep info secret from the other players that is also your right, just specify that you would like to do so.
There are rocky hills just south of Khel Zhad. Pesht is right on top of the first really large one.
There are rocky hills just north of the River Sirion.
There are hills just west of the River Sirion between Durham and Hamish. The River Sirion runs right up against them. They are the reason why it bends strangely around Durham.
You know about the old town of Ipswitch, located near the centre of the White Downs. It was once a stop along a trade route from Ft. Thorpe to a dwarven ruin in the white mountains.
You know about the old mining town of Innsmouth, located on the edge of the White Downs about 20 miles Southeast of Hamish.
You know of an old road that travels through the White Downs. It runs from what is now Hamish more or less directly southeast until about the middle of the Downs.
There are hills just southeast of Ft. Thorpe. They are relatively difficult to traverse with frequent cliffs, creating a natural bottleneck.
You know roughly where the main road that used to run through the White Downs is. It travels from Ft Thorpe to Gladstock, then on to an old Dwarven ruin.
A spellcaster and his brutish oaf of a bodyguard were about the villages in the autumn. It is rumored that he’s connected to the disappearance of a few simpletons, and that he’s been through the White Downs.
One night you were in a tavern and an old drunk started talking to you. She said that she thinks that spellcaster was searching for simpletons because he wanted to bring them to the White Downs for sacrifice. She also knows that he was asking a lot of questions about the people who lived there before the orcs came.
I have Zordt's formatting updated to the requested format. I made a few very minor changes that I think helped to reduce clutter. I also did keep my personal formatting at the bottom of my alias, it helps me track a few extra things (such as skill rank distribution) that the requested format doesn't track.
1 - Ft. Thorp has orcs in it most of the winter.
2 - You know the popular version of the story of Sandy Pisspants and the demon of White Marsh.
...The demon was a terrible creature that slew many of the inhabitants of Gorham and Brightham. Old Sandy, alderman of Gorham, sharpened his sword and girt himself in armor one fine summer morning, and came back that same night with mud in his boots and no demon. He said he found it’s nest and poured holy water and burnt incense to drive it away, but it’s a day’s walk just to get to White Marsh, and no one believed him. All two days worth of food was gone from his pack, though, and the wine he brought to celebrate his inevitable success. Summer gave way to autumn, and people kept on dying. Then along came Ragnar the red, a tall man with a voice like wind and hair like fire. Old Sandy tossed a bag of gold at his feet and bade him slay the demon. And off went Ragnar without a word, whistling softly.
Three days later Old Sandy came rushing into the tavern in Gringham late one night, reeking powerfully. “I went outside to relieve myself," he said, "and there was the demon, standing in the moonlight. It cocked it’s head at me like a dog, and all thought of relieving myself left me. As I had no sword and no armor, all I could do was run, and so I’ve run all the way here.” He slumped in a chair, sweat dripping from his brow, shirt and trousers soaked through, reaching for another man’s beer. The door to the tavern drifted open, and there stood Ragnar the red, fiery hair flowing in the wind, the demon’s head in one hand. He spoke with a voice like the wind, "his story’s true, except for one thing. Old Sandy didn’t forget to relieve himself." Then he tossed the demon’s head at Sandy Pisspant’s feet, and went off without a word, whistling softly.
3 - Failed check.
4 - There is a small, magical valley in the midst of the White Downs that is green all year long. It would be a nice place to rest.
5 - The River Sirion gets much faster and harsher after Burkesville.
6 - Failed check.
8 - The village of Pesht is inhabited by both humans and dwarves, and is quite friendly to travelers.
7 - Failed check.
9 - Pesht was recently wiped out. It might be rebuilt next summer.
10 - The Deepwoods are so deep because they’ve never been inhabited by people. At least, not in hundreds of years.
11 - Don't have relevant knowledge.
12 - Don't have relevant knowledge.
13 - Don't have relevant knowledge.
14 - The boy’s tattoo traps the soul of a lesser Demon. If the boy dies, the Demon will be released.
15 - The White Downs is rumored to be cursed and crawling with undead.
16 - Failed check.
17 - Failed check.
18 - The storm will drop about two feet of snow, but within a dense forest there will only be about one foot on the ground.
19 - There are rocky hills just south of Khel Zhad. Pesht is right on top of the first really large one.
20 - There are rocky hills just north of the River Sirion.
21 - There are hills just west of the River Sirion between Durham and Hamish. The River Sirion runs right up against them. They are the reason why it bends strangely around Durham.
22 - You know about the old town of Ipswitch, located near the centre of the White Downs. It was once a stop along a trade route from Ft. Thorpe to a dwarven ruin in the white mountains.
23 - You know about the old mining town of Innsmouth, located on the edge of the White Downs about 20 miles Southeast of Hamish.
24 - Failed check.
25 - There are hills just southeast of Ft. Thorpe. They are relatively difficult to traverse with frequent cliffs, creating a natural bottleneck.
26 - You know roughly where the main road that used to run through the White Downs is. It travels from Ft Thorpe to Gladstock, then on to an old Dwarven ruin.
27 (partial success) - A spellcaster and his brutish oaf of a bodyguard were about the villages in the autumn. It is rumored that he’s connected to the disappearance of a few simpletons, and that he’s been through the White Downs.
Zordt will share all of the information he is aware of freely with the party.
Gahh! Walls of text! Just back from a weeklong vacation! I'll get caught up.
My knowledge rolls:
Crushed them!
The storm that swept in will likely continue for only a few hours before dying down.
The storm will drop about two feet of snow, but within a dense forest there will only be about one foot on the ground.
Zordt looks good except that:
You have Knowledge geography listed as an adventuring skill rather than a background skill
It looks like you forgot to apply the +2 bonus from your item to the climb skill
I think you should have 20 GP more than you have listed
I don't see a favored class bonus anywhere
Ah, nice catches. Fixed, fixed, fixed.
For favored class I currently have it in HP. Although I am still considering moving a few of those into more bardic performance rounds.
Character Build Update
I considered various alternate builds multi-classing with either oracle or cleric, looking for an interesting way to enhance her utility in melee. But nothing really stood out, so I'm sticking with 4 levels of witch and the cartomancer archetype.
I did make some tweaks to the character, however.
Change abilities: lowered strength to 8, wisdom to 10, raised charisma to 16
For saves, I replaced an equipment choice that cost 1000 gp with cloak of resistance +1, so her saves are now Fort +2, Ref +4, and Wis +5; so a little more balanced.
Adjusted melee attack stats to reflect lower strength. She won't be using melee weapons unless as a last resort.
Skills were adjusted a bit to reflect ability score changes and trait changes.
Changed hex from Ward to Evil Eye. Changed Feat to get Extra Hex and chose the Healing Hex. So she can cast CLW on each PC once per day. She can use the CLW wand for more. I haven't adjusted her gold spending to reflect the offered sharing of the cost of the CLW wand, but I'll take care of that when everyone has agreed to that.
Traits: Changed the Convincing Liar trait to World Traveler (race trait, human), which makes sense motive a class skill and gives a +1 bonus.
I created a document and a spreadsheet with details of the build and a list of costs and weights to make it easier to check build. See the links at the top of the profile.
Rules question: Should I add Gitana's strength modifier or dex modifier when making a melee touch attack? I don't think the rules treat a melee touch attack any differently than a non-touch melee attack, so that would mean the strength modifier. But seems if all you are trying to do is touch someone, Dex is more relevant than strength. I usually house rule this to say you can take whichever is better. I could take weapon finesse, but seems a waste just to get the bonus for the touch attack.
Gitana will usually be using her Harrow Deck and the Deadly Dealer Feat to make ranged touch attacks with cards rather than melee touch attacks, but in case she has to make a melee touch attack instead, I'd like to know the bonus.
Question 25:
Question 26:
Question 27:
So she adds 25 and 26 to her list. I created a spoilered list of checks made at the bottom of the profile.
Retconning
It sounds like there are two options that immediately jump out:
1) Zordt and Hedrak have known one another for a while, and came to the region together. There they found Norde and are now chaperoning him. The three of them met Gitana in Gringham.
2) Zordt knew Gitana in her youth and helped her escape from the evil cult. Later, they met Hedrak. They decided to travel north with him and along the way they met Norde. Then they arrived in Gringham.
Either of these is okay with me.
I can see Gitana and Norde becoming traveling buddies. She would be inclined to take advantage of his naivete, if he had much wealth to relieve him of, but she probably would prefer to make friends with him, impressing him with her fortune telling prowess, and then agree that if he'll be a kind of body guard for her, she can see to it that he isn't taken advantage of by local rubes. They might then meet the half-orcs later or even just in Gringham.
I can see Gitana and Norde becoming traveling buddies. She would be inclined to take advantage of his naivete, if he had much wealth to relieve him of, but she probably would prefer to make friends with him, impressing him with her fortune telling prowess, and then agree that if he'll be a kind of body guard for her, she can see to it that he isn't taken advantage of by local rubes. They might then meet the half-orcs later or even just in Gringham.
I actually like this idea quite a bit.
should play unfold in initiative order or can listed players post in any order? I think an important part of combat is the choices a player has when it is their turn to act. When posting comes in wily-nily it can diminish the fun (for me). The drawback, of course, is the extra time it can take.
I agree that the order of combat can be quite important. It seems like it is much more common for PBP games to use block initiative, but I have seen some where they did things in stricter order. Personally, I'm inclined to follow the convention here since I don't have any experience with either system. I would like to see Albion and Norde weigh in.
As GM, I prefer to keep posts in initiative order, but my players know if they have a limited window to post and their turn is coming soon, they can post early; but in this case, their actions don't take place until the earlier PCs have acted, which can force the occasional ret-con when someone else kills the target you assumed you had.
This seems like it would definitely mitigate the speed/pacing factor quite a bit. If we do go in initiative order I think we should do this.
Rules question: Should I add Gitana's strength modifier or dex modifier when making a melee touch attack? I don't think the rules treat a melee touch attack any differently than a non-touch melee attack, so that would mean the strength modifier. But seems if all you are trying to do is touch someone, Dex is more relevant than strength. I usually house rule this to say you can take whichever is better. I could take weapon finesse, but seems a waste just to get the bonus for the touch attack.
On the one hand, I mostly agree with you that STR seems more relevant than DEX for touching someone. On the other hand, I don't really understand what STR and DEX represent in reality. And I also generally try to avoid making decisions about combat mechanics based on my understanding of the way real fighting works. Ultimately, I don't think it will make much difference either way, so I'm inclined to allow it. Especially because I think weapon finesse is a bit of a strange feat in the first place.
Past vs present tense
I prefer present tense. This random article that I don't trust very much seems to suggest that the players would be more inclined to write in past tense while the GM would prefer present tense. I would like to hear more people express their preferences before going into greater detail.
Edit: one reason is that I already have a fair amount of writing for this campaign in the present tense.
About me: I’m male, 50, married, have a 10 year old (who games), and have been playing D&D of various forms going back to ’78. I am also in Virginia, Gitana, Did you play Living Greyhawk in the day? Possibly we ran across one another? You say “University,” so that narrows it down a bit. I attended Hampden-Sydney College myself, graduating in ’92.
I’d be ok with providing a number for texts, but I understand if others won’t.
My thoughts on:
Botting: The Norde examples are perfect, because I was thinking to myself, “botting Norde will be pretty easy, he’s kind of a one trick pony… SMASH!” Botting can happen because someone has been busy, or someone is on vacation/away. 24 hours seems a reasonable time limit, since we’re all agreeing to a post per day, right? I say keep it to more mechanical, rather than RPing.
Treasure and Inventory: In my experience accounting for food, arrows, and other sundries becomes bothersome in most games. Encumbrance is the same, except when the PC’s find a pair of 2 ton doors made of mithral, and they say “the dwarf will haul them out.” The problem here is that Pathfinder (like versions before it), and as exemplified in the various Living campaigns they have engendered, makes the assumption that the PCs loot everything and haul it away to keep their wealth by level up. It’s impractical to think the PCs will have the room to haul 20 suits of chainmail, 20 shields, 20 longswords, 20 daggers, etc, with the intent of seeloing it all to make money, and yet that’s how the game plays out, and always has. Now, if the compact between players and GM is such that “we’ll only haul away the ‘expensive’ loot, and you’ll make sure there’s enough of it to make up the difference,” then we play it that way. I haven’t checked the stats on the various PCs, but I’d wager we have a decent set of Survival checks, and can feed ourselves in the woods.
Communism and democracy gets a party killed. Situational Meritocracy gets you fortune and glory.
– For a complete list of the rules, and for my plans if I ever become an Evil Overlord, you can check my Zahir profile.
Party composition: I’d really like to play Norde, but I’m ok with making something else if needed. I’ve got some cash left, and could meta it up for a CLW wand as well. Norde has a decent chunk of change left over, and by IC and OOC he’d be ok with using it for whatever. I say this given Gitana’s comment that she’d bilk Norde for cash, she is welcome to do so IC, and then use the money for the party good.
Norde...what a fascination character concept.
– THANKS! Norde really wants to be accepted, he’d go either way depending on just which side of the Force adopts him. Some nice guys like you would be great. He doesn’t have any built in prejudices.
Initiative/Combat: Doing initiative strictly in order kills PBPs, because I may have a slot of time per day to log in, but if my Init isn’t ready then, I’m done for the day, and it may take us 4 days to do a round of combat. I’m a fan more of people posting some conditional things to do. It will be easy for Norde, “Norde charges the nearest bad guy and swings away…”
Pathfinder (like versions before it), and as exemplified in the various Living campaigns they have engendered, makes the assumption that the PCs loot everything and haul it away to keep their wealth by level up. It’s impractical to think the PCs will have the room to haul 20 suits of chainmail, 20 shields, 20 longswords, 20 daggers, etc, with the intent of seeloing it all to make money, and yet that’s how the game plays out, and always has. Now, if the compact between players and GM is such that “we’ll only haul away the ‘expensive’ loot, and you’ll make sure there’s enough of it to make up the difference,” then we play it that way.
I'm not going to expect you to carry around the armor of fallen foes in order to make money. You only have to haul away the expensive loot. Also keep in mind that you won't be able to much of buy anything expensive until you get to Burkesville. If we do decide to keep playing with the same players and characters after the adventure is over, then you will have more opportunity for advancement.
I haven’t checked the stats on the various PCs, but I’d wager we have a decent set of Survival checks, and can feed ourselves in the woods.
Gitana: Survival +0
This formatting is weird and I can't make it go away. Whatever goes on the next line after the quote is right underneath it no mater how many times I press enter. And then it has a space underneath it that won't go away. Anyone know what's going on here?Zordt: Survival Edit: +1
Norde: Survival +7
Hedrak: Survival +8
The rules for Survival are:
You travel at half your normal overland speed
You make a DC 10 check to find food for yourself
Every 2 points by which you beat the check allows you to provide food for one other creature
Additionally, I will apply a -2 circumstance penalty to a Survival check made to search for food because it's not exactly berry season.
This means that if you are willing to travel at half speed, Norde and Hedrak can both take 10 in order to feed themselves and a total of 5 other people. However, moving slowly could be very consequential.
Initiative/Combat: Doing initiative strictly in order kills PBPs, because I may have a slot of time per day to log in, but if my Init isn’t ready then, I’m done for the day, and it may take us 4 days to do a round of combat. I’m a fan more of people posting some conditional things to do. It will be easy for Norde, “Norde charges the nearest bad guy and swings away…”
I agree with this reasoning. I am especially inclined to do things out of initiative order because my goal for this first foray into PBPing is to have a successful game with a fast pace even at the cost of other important game elements. I would like to hear Albion weigh in, however I think using standard PBP block initiative will be better. If things are moving very quickly and we decide that we're willing to sacrifice some speed for the additional tactical elements that strict initiative order encourages, I am willing to try that out.
Zordt you're right, I miscounted your HP.
Gitana's crunch looks good to me, I don't see any errors.
Norde and Gitana, I'm not sure if you overlooked the discord, but I made it so that we can have a real time chat option. Hedrak, Zordt and have used it a little bit. If you had a quick question or clarification to make, for instance, you could just ask me there. Since it makes my phone ding, I usually respond in just a few minutes.
Hedrak's alias is up and running - it seems I still have some decent cash to spend - we start with 6k, correct?
Also need to finish up on my skills.
Suggestions for Party PurchasesWand of CLW (750gp, 187.5gp each)
Potion of Lesser Restoration (300gp per potion, 75gp each per potion) - Perhaps 3 or 4 of these?
Horses (price varies, see options here) - Good for increasing our overland speed and carrying extra gearI also recommend for anybody who doesn't have innate healing abilities to pick up at least a potion of CLW. You never know when you're going to be the last man standing and need to heal one of the healers.
Yes please - at least one each? Total would be... 487,5 gold
Norde has 432gp left after he bought his gear.
Norde looks like he has 2 extra hit points, possibly because you added 7 hp at each level after first instead of 6.5
It looks like your attack, damage and Will saving throw include rage bonuses, right?
I count 27 skill ranks and don't see a separation between background skills and adventuring skills. Given your int you get 24 skill ranks +8 background skill ranks. Here are rules for background skills.
I'm not sure what you're using your favored class bonus for.
I have you at 280.19 GP left.
I have you carrying 92 lbs of gear with 41 lbs of additional capacity.
The gp difference could be somewhat caused by the purchasing of a class "gear kit." Although that shouldn't account for 150gp of difference.
Hero Lab keeps track of BG skills, but when it outputs, it doesn't draw a separation, it puts them all in order.
I'll take a look and give you the breakdown on skills.
The 2 HP is certainly a misunderstanding. When you say 1/2 + 1, I assumed you meant how PFS does it, so a Barbarian gets 6+1 HP per level
Rereading how I phrased the HP section of character creation, I definitely could have done better. I meant MaxDice+HalfMax*3+1, not MaxDice+(HalfMax+1)*3.
The Barbarian Kit seems to be off by 3 sp, 9 cp and by 8.5 lbs compared to buying each item individually, 4lbs of which are likely due to the difference between an empty and full waterskin. You can take the other 4.5 lb weight reduction by using the weight from the kit and the 3 sp, 9 cp by buying each item individually. I would like to draw your attention to one discrepancy: the kit lists a blanket whereas your inventory lists a bedroll. A blanket costs 5 sp and weighs 3 lbs, a bedroll costs 1 sp and weighs 5 lbs. The numbers at the beginning reflect a blanket, not a bedroll.
I priced each item individually in the inventory spreadsheet. You can check them out there and see if you notice any errors on my part.
Since it looks like we are tracking encumbrance tightly I remind everybody that masterwork backpacks exist, which are generally worth it if you have an above average strength score.
Norde didn't take a Barbarian kit, per his background story, he took a Bard kit, hahaha.
Hero Lab says my gear is valued at 5570 gp, and I have 432 left, for a difference of ~2gp, which sounds like the value of a kit gains you. I'll compare Hero Lab to your spreadsheet tomorrow.
I've fixed the HP issue. I have my favored class as Barbarian and goes into HP.
I have 4 skill points in each of:
Acrobatics
Climb
Intimidate
K-nature
Perception
Survival
Swim
That's 28 total. (4 (Class)+ 2 (Int) + 1 (Human)) * 4 =28
and then 4 BG in:
Handle Animal
Perform Sing
Ok, I think everything is now good. It looks like you're factoring ACP into your skill bonuses already, is that correct?
I think our only remaining topic for discussion is past vs present tense writing. I have weighed in and said that I prefer present tense, and Gitana has said she prefers past tense. I would like to hear from the others.
As a group, you also need to decide how many potions of lesser restoration you want to buy, if any.
Norde has 432 GP
Zordt has 2241 GP (it's still not too late to upgrade that bow to +1 after all)
Gitana has 1.8 GP, but has paid the full price for the CLW wand.
I'm not sure how much money Hedrak has left.
After splitting the cost of the CLW wand, you are left with
Norde - 244.5
Zordt - 2053.5
Gitana - 564.3
Hedrak - (187.5 owed for CLW wand)
With no further shuffling, you could buy 3 potions of lesser restoration and leave yourselves with the following:
Norde - 19.5
Zordt - 1838.5
Gitana - 339.3
Hedrak - (412.5 owed for CLW wand and potions of lesser restoration)
Once Hedrak's build is finalized, we agree to past or present tense, and we finalize purchases, I plan to move things forward in the gameplay thread.
My ACP is factored in (it's a 0 anyways).
I also prefer present tense.
I have more shopping to do, I don't plan to leave 2k on the table. I agree with the suggested purchases for giving Gitana money for the wand for purchasing 3 potions of lesser restoration, which I say we keep 1 of each on everybody except Hedrak (he has the highest saves so least likely to take ability damage).
I will have my purchases finalized tomorrow. I am ready to proceed, none of my purchases will make any significant change to my build.
Yes, HL figures ACP into skills.
I’m gtg!
Gitana will use the extra cash to pick up a couple of 2nd level scrolls, leaving her some cash to spare.
While I prefer writing in past tense, most games I've played in use present tense, which I suspect is a holdover from table top games where it makes more sense to use present tense. When everyone hears what one "is" doing, it is simpler to understand when stated in present tense.
In PBP, however, most people read the posts in order, which makes it more like reading a novel, so in that regard, I think past tense is better. But then, my favorite novel, Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, is written in present tense, something I didn't even notice when I read it the first few times. So it can be done.
One other thing, which is more stylistic, but it might be good to discuss. One approach to writing is to only describe what characters say and do, without sharing what they are thinking. This feels more natural in RP situations, where unless someone has telepathy, thoughts are not known and must be inferred.
But some people like to share what their characters are thinking. It's not a big point, but I prefer to try to convey thoughts indirectly, with descriptions of facial expressions and other body language details. In a table-top game, people don't generally tell others what their characters are thinking.
GM Thifty: will you prefer to roll knowledge checks, sense motive, checks, and the like so players don't know if they got a good or bad roll? I'm okay with that and toward that end, I usually add spoilers that have the dicebot text written out so the GM can just do a quick copy and paste to make the rolls quickly.
Something I do the games I GM: if an enemy makes an attack that requires a saving throw, I usually make the roll for the player and announce the result. This saves time, since it can take a day for a player to roll a saving throw so the effects of the spell or attack can be resolved. The only problem with this can be if a PC has an option to add a bonus to the roll or the option to re-roll. Gitana may have a bonus she can choose to apply based on her harrowed feat.
Alright, gear is done. I went with the assumption that we're all pitching in for the wand of CLW and the lesser restoration potions and went from there.
I changed my greataxe to a falchion (for weight reasons mostly), purchased an ioun stone and some more cold weather equipment, artisan's tools for craft (bows), and a ton more scrolls and a few other consumables like an elixir of vision and some fancy +1 seeking arrows. Leaves me with 20gp and only a single pound to spare before I go into a medium load, so if anybody else would be willing to help carry the food that would be appreciated so I don't slow down the party. If not I can get rid of some of my consumables and pick up some muleback cords instead.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For style, I generally write my character's physical reactions and I put their thoughts in italics as well. I generally trust my fellow players and the GM not to metagame. I have absolutely no problem if somebody else deigns not to do the same.
I'm fine with whatever rolls the GM wants to make on my behalf. And I agree that generally any kind of "automatic roll" that the player wouldn't have much agency over (such as a save) is broadly speaking good for the GM to roll. However Gitana makes a good point that in PbP this can sometimes be a challenge when players have situational abilities that allow for situational bonuses or re-rolls. So I think it a wise idea for us all to list any such abilities we have.
And I apologize ahead of time for this, because Zordt has one of the worst offenders for these types of abilities. He has saving finale, allowing him to end his bardic performance as an immediate action to allow himself or any ally within 35 feet to reroll a failed save. I will typically save this for bad effects that I think the victim has at least a decent chance to make their save on. I.e. if Norde fails a DC 16 fort save against something that would knock him unconscious, I would absolutely use it. But if somebody fails a save against something with a minor detriment, or if the save is unlikely to happen (such as Gitana failing a DC 20 fort save), I won't bother wasting the spell. Unless we're desperate, or it's something that would kill the player.
That's a lot of text for "it's a case-by-case basis".
Other than that, my only action-interrupting ability is a shawl of life keeping, which will come into play if Zordt is reduced below 0 HP.
Also:
Gitana, are you alright with joining the discord group? If you'd prefer another way for faster communication just let us know.
I used the extra money from the shared CLW wand to purchase two scrolls of Summon Monster II, for situations where we either need an extra combatant or when we need a creature that can do something useful.
I added two more spells to Gitana's spellbook that I realize now may be very useful, when it comes to travel speeds. She has 1st level spell Mount which gives a ridable horse or pony for 8 hours. Then I added the 2nd level spell Communal Mount which does the same but we could get four hours for 2 hours each, enough if we need to make a hasty getaway or just cover a bit of extra ground during travel.
I think Gitana is good to go. It sounds like she and Norde are traveling companions who have yet to meet Zordt and Hedrak. Maybe Gitana and Norde are in the tavern of the opening story, with Gitana studying a Harrow reading as something the other two could become curious about.
If anyone is not familiar with the Harrow deck, I can explain further. It's basically a Pathfinder version of a Tarot deck, with suits and images suited to aspects of the game mechanic. Click on Gitana's profile and see the spoiler at the bottom for a list of cards and a document that gives more on each card.
I would like to hear Norde and Hedrak weigh in on the matter of past vs present tense. Since this is a decision that may affect our enjoyment of the game, and which also affects how we play the game, I would like us to make it a a group.
But some people like to share what their characters are thinking. It's not a big point, but I prefer to try to convey thoughts indirectly, with descriptions of facial expressions and other body language details. In a table-top game, people don't generally tell others what their characters are thinking.
For style, I generally write my character's physical reactions and I put their thoughts in italics as well. I generally trust my fellow players and the GM not to metagame. I have absolutely no problem if somebody else deigns not to do the same.
I don't think it's really up to me whether you want to give your characters thoughts to us directly or just show them via facial expression etc. I think that simply describing body language and actions can express a great deal of internal thinking, and would probably result in a more 'novel like' finished product. But I also think that sharing thoughts is probably an easier way to develop your character. It can also help to break up large chunks of dialogue. Then again, it may also tend to make your posts longer, sometimes unnecessarily so, and if you do it poorly it thus has a higher potential to be boring. I'm not sure how important it is to all conform to the same convention.
I will mostly be describing things from the point of view of your characters, so you won't usually get to see the thoughts of an NPC. But in some cases I might decide to share what a character is thinking.
GM Thifty: will you prefer to roll knowledge checks, sense motive, checks, and the like so players don't know if they got a good or bad roll? I'm okay with that and toward that end, I usually add spoilers that have the dicebot text written out so the GM can just do a quick copy and paste to make the rolls quickly.
I will generally make any rolls that don't have a cost for you, or else put results under spoilers with a listed DC. For the most part, I will show you your dice roll and label it clearly, but there may be times when I make rolls in secret.
The only problem with this can be if a PC has an option to add a bonus to the roll or the option to re-roll. Gitana may have a bonus she can choose to apply based on her harrowed feat.
If I roll something for you and you would've applied such a modifier or reroll, you have the option to retroactively do so, even if you normally wouldn't be allowed to, even if I have already announced the results.
I think Gitana is good to go. It sounds like she and Norde are traveling companions who have yet to meet Zordt and Hedrak. Maybe Gitana and Norde are in the tavern of the opening story, with Gitana studying a Harrow reading as something the other two could become curious about.
If no one has any objections to this, I am ready to advance things in the gameplay thread. I will describe the tavern and give you a chance to meet before throwing the recruitment hook at you.
Also:
Gitana, are you alright with joining the discord group? If you'd prefer another way for faster communication just let us know.
I'll do that today. I don't tend to get many calls or text messages on my cell phone, so I don't check my phone a lot, although I do try to check it fairly often because students sometimes text me with important information.
About me: I’m male, 50, married, have a 10 year old (who games), and have been playing D&D of various forms going back to ’78. I am also in Virginia, Gitana, Did you play Living Greyhawk in the day? Possibly we ran across one another? You say “University,” so that narrows it down a bit. I attended Hampden-Sydney College myself, graduating in ’92.
...
I was introduced to FRP while attending Purdue University in Indiana. My one FRP name drop opportunity is to mention that I roomed with Jeff Grubb, who went on to work for TSR and later WOTC, a major figure in the development of Forgotten Realms, and a great DM. I learned to love the game in part because he made things so fun; didn't mind that he frequently and without qualm moderated TPKs.
I went to grad school in LA. I only moved to Virginia in 1990.
Well, welcome to the Old Dominion (30 years late!)
I tend to write in past tense for these things, I find it's tough writing in present tense, but if that's the consensus, I'll try to conform.
I would be willing to do past tense, it sounds like Gitana and Norde would prefer that.
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Hedrak has said that he'd prefer present tense, but is fine either way. It seems like I'm the only person with a stronger preference for present tense, so I will yield to Gitana and Norde.
I will post in the gameplay thread in three hours.
Wohoo! ;)